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2018 IGF - MAG - Virtual Meeting - VIII

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during an IGF virtual call. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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>> Hi, everyone. We are just audio testing for the captions. Thank you.
(standing by).
>> Hi, everyone, this is Anja from the IGF Secretariat. Chengetai is instructing me to say that we will wait for up to two minutes for other colleagues to join, including himself, yes. Thank you for understanding.
(microphone feedback).
>> Hello, can you hear me?
>> We can hear you, Chengetai.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Great. Sorry for being a little bit late. I had a little bit of trouble getting on to the network. Yes.
So, good afternoon, evening and morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let's start the meeting.
(voices in the background).
I'll hand it over to Lynn to start the meeting.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai. The first order of business is to see if anyone objects to the call being recorded.
That is a standard practice, but ... give everyone a moment to respond. Okay. Seeing no objections, and again as it is standard practice and certainly an important part of transparency, we will proceed with the adoption of the agenda which was sent out I think approximately a week ago and is posted there in the Webex room.
Certainly like to thank everybody for sending in all of the updates, MAG working group updates and that sort of thing. It really helps and should help us to move forward, and hopefully have some discussion around the items as opposed to one way reports.
Calling the agenda as approved, seeing no objections, I do have a question for the Secretariat, and that is with respect to, I guess we are using the speaking queue. If you want to request the floor, please use the speaking queue, and if there are any difficulties doing that, Luis Bobo and the Secretariat is there to support you.
(music playing).
With that, if we could move to the first item, which is miscellaneous updates by the Secretariat.
(voice in the background).
Chengetai?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you very much, Lynn.
The first update I would like to give is the update on the venue. Myself and the ICT technical lead of the IGF meetings, we visited Paris, and we had a walk around at the UNESCO headquarters and also spoke with the Government officials.
The meeting is basically confirmed 12, 13 and 14 of November. It's a three day meeting, instead of a four day meeting. Unfortunately, there is not going to be a Day Zero, as we traditionally have had programs that can happen the day before the meeting. The 11th is Armistice Day in Paris, so there is a lot of activities. There is going to be a high level event and also UNESCO is going to be hosting a artificial intelligence event as well.
That is at 4:00 in the afternoon on the 11th. So the traditional people like GigaNet, sorry, they will have to find other venues and make their own arrangements for Day Zero events. Of course the IGF Secretariat can still advertise them on our Web site. So people will know where to go. But we will not be in a position to be hosting the traditional Day Zero events as we have done in the past.
We did take a look at the rooms, and I think the rooms are adequate. There is still a lot of work to be done about the wiring, etcetera, because the UNESCO building is a bit like the offices here in Geneva. They are not quite up to the technical specifications that people are used to for an Internet event. They will have to do some more wiring and stuff like that.
But UNESCO, ICT department said that they can do that. One other thing about the compressed time we have, we are going to have three days, we may be able for the workshops to go maybe an hour more, so maybe end at 7 if we want to for the workshops.
For the main room, be it the thematic sessions or whatever you want to call them this time, we are still strapped with the interpretation requirements, as that they can only work in blocks of three hours. So we can only have two blocks of three hours every day. So that's basically four blocks of three hours that we can play around with.
We did try and say can we have a half an hour break, etcetera. But unfortunately, they cannot due to the rules, and if we do go beyond those three hours, we would need to hire a whole new team, so basically doubling the cost, which is not financially feasible at the moment.
So I can take questions on the venue now, if there's any questions. Then I'll go to the evaluations.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Chengetai, there was a question in the chat room which I'll let you read, and maybe just take this opportunity as well to point out that the Paris Peace Forum days actually run from the 11th to the 13th. So there is also a number of activities happening on the 11th through that Forum. But you see Timea's question now?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, 4:00 p.m. event is a UNESCO event which is on artificial intelligence. I will get more details on that, if they have agenda and exactly what is going on in that event. We will post it on the Web site, or make a link and send the information out on the MAG mailing list as well.
It's not an IGF event. But it's they are doing it in conjunction with the IGF. How many rooms will be available for the workshops? Well, we have a wide range of rooms. We can have about up to, you know, the normal 11 rooms. There are two rooms that are fairly small, which are about 50 people rooms, two of the 50 people rooms. We can still use them. Do we find a place for a lightning session? This depends on the weather. There is a lot of place outside or, you know, with a ceiling. But inside UNESCO, yes, we could have a lightning sessions. That will have to look more, we will have to look more closely at but I think it is possible if we squeeze some place.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Chengetai, if I can add, even though in fact there are 11 workshop rooms available, I think one of the things we need to be prepared to discuss at the face to face MAG meeting, was the MAG desire to less parallel tracks, certainly less redundancy in the themes and sub themes. But there was also specific requests of less parallel tracks. I think we shouldn't necessarily assume that we would fill every workshop room.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes, exactly. Yes, I totally agree with what Lynn has said. Physically, it's there. But do we really want to or need to fill in every single nook and cranny of UNESCO.
Yes, okay, for the high level event, I don't know if there is a French Government representative on this call?
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I haven't seen anyone, no.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Okay. I'll leave it up to them. But they really want to, they were thinking of doing something in conjunction with the Paris peace conference, because there will be lots of high level Government officials there, heads of states, etcetera. So they really want to take advantage of that. But I'll let them tell us the details.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Are there any further questions for Chengetai with respect to the venue or Day Zero? Seems not. Chengetai, do you want to move to the next part of the update?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: The next part of the update is to do with the evaluations, as you know the deadline for evaluations is 23:59 UTC today. Currently, at the moment Luis tells me that there are 60 percent of evaluations have been done. All proposals have at least three evaluations that have been done. But it would really help if you have more people evaluating each proposal, just to make it fairer.
We have 13 that have three. The rest have four or more people who have evaluated them. We will, I mean we don't really want to extend the deadline as such, but we will not close it, you know, at midnight on the dot. Probably tomorrow, sometime, when Luis comes into the office, then he can look and close it. So please try and do as many evaluations as you can, just to make it fairer for all the workshop proposers that have taken the time to submit a proposal.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: If I can echo Chengetai's comments, this is of course obviously one of the most important parts of the responsibility of a MAG member. It's also one of the key evaluation criteria the UN uses when they look at reappointments for year 2 and year 3. Please do your best to get them in, all of them in, even I don't like saying these words but even partial is better than none. We have had really good success in the last year. I'm hoping that everybody is just coming in late. We have had very very high rates of return. In fact I think in the last years, I can only remember sort of one, maybe two MAG members not submitting the evaluations. So that is a good goal. There is a couple more questions in the chat room for you, Chengetai.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: I think for the lunches, will the French host cover lunches and coffee breaks at the venue it is not a requirement as such. I think first of all, the French have to, the French Government has to look at the final costs of hosting, and then they can make that determination. I don't think they can make that determination now.
It really depends on how much money they have to put forward to making the venue, UNESCO venue ready for an IGF meeting. I'll give them a month or so to decide. I'm looking if there is any other question.
I don't see any other questions. If there are any other questions, please let me know.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Chengetai. Seems like not. Are there any other updates under agenda item 2?
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: There is no updates from me. I'll ask the rest of the Secretariat if they have anything else to add. Eleonora or Luis, Anja.
>> (overlapping speakers).
>> Sorry, go ahead.
>> I was going to ask if you could, two things first, there is a really helpful page which includes all the resource documents that we use for our MAG meetings. On that page of course, you can find things such as the timetable and that sort of thing.
The Secretariat has just posted one additional document which I think would be helpful to possibly pull up here in the room, if we can. One of them looks at the titles for the main, for the IGF meeting that we have held over the first 12 years. That is an agenda item for our face to face meeting in Geneva, and the Secretariat has included that, just to get people thinking in terms of the types of titles.
The second slide that is up there actually looks at the possible session allocation, if you will. We use workshops as sort of a generic term, but the number of workshops which equates often to the rooms available cover not only the workshop proposals, the MAG is reviewing, but it also covers things such as the Open Forums, the Best Practice Forum sessions, some of the other community sessions there as well.
So the Secretariat just to help our deliberations during our face to face meeting has put up a couple of proposals. I would encourage everybody to look at that. I think that helps our overall deliberations. I think they are trying to pull it up now in the Webex room there. And the link, was just posted in the chat room. Again, just, these are busy days right now. I'm not suggesting that people look at that today, even heavily at this point, but just to start reflecting on that, so that we get a little bit of a head start for the Geneva meeting. There it is right there, again just looks at the various sessions including main sessions, requests we have for some collaborative sessions, and it compares it back to 2016, 17, with three possible scenarios. As Chengetai was saying earlier with respect to the thematic sessions formerly known as main sessions, we have four three hour slots which can be split up in any possible number of ways, if we are going to split that 3 hour time period up, we need minimum 15 minutes, probably better with 20 minutes, to allow the room to empty, be reset, and folks to come in for the next session.
So that is either sort of one hour workshop and something equating to 90 workshop or two 75 minute workshops or but again, just think about that, depending on how we split those three hour slots, we could have up to 8 thematic sessions. Let me see if there is anything else that the Secretariat wants to add, or if there are any other questions that have occurred to anybody on the updates in the Secretariat.
>> LUIS BOBO: Hi, this is Luis. Just to know if it's the moment but just to warn that the registration for the face to face MAG meeting is open I guess since last week. Maybe someone could correct me. That is in the Web site. You can register as on site and/or online participant. The on site participant follows the UN accreditation system. I think that is all for my side.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Luis. If perhaps you could send a link reminding everybody as well, particularly for those folks that aren't on the call here. Any additional comments or questions? Chengetai, is there a update on the press release? I know the UN is working on both of them or all of them.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Yes. We are pushing it from our side. Unfortunately, we are in Geneva, but Wyman who is our focal point in New York and DESA, he is usually very efficient. So I've no doubt that it will be done as soon as possible. He is on it.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Last call for any further questions to the Secretariat on their update.
Seeing none, and I don't yet see anyone from the Host Country on the call, I think Chengetai mentioned in a call I had with him earlier that the French Government is still affirming who will be their Host Country Co Chair. As soon as that is known, we will obviously ensure that that's known to the MAG. David Martinon has been French Ambassador, playing a key role, address the MAG a couple of calls ago, he is in Panama at the ICANN meeting, they have been exchanging some E mails, but sends his apologies for not being here on the call.
Let's move to item 4, review of the draft agenda. The open consultation, the MAG meeting, I would like to go through that, day by day at a high level, again people should take their team and reflect upon and send in any comments as well. The first day is reserved for an open consultation with the community. It's an opportunity for the MAG to certainly inform the community on various activities that are taking place within the MAG and obviously engage with them on those activities, and also provide adequate open community time. Let me see, I was just told that Dalila is here from the French Government, but I don't are you here? I don't see you in the list of participants. There you are. Sorry, she is just coming on now, I think. Maybe we will come back to her in a moment, and while we are going through the agenda here, once she's actually got voice, Chengetai, maybe you can send her a chat in the background and see if she wants to provide any additional updates.
Coming back to the Geneva meeting, you will see we have allowed time for various updates on the key subjects and community engagement time following each one of them.
Throughout the entire MAG meeting agenda, I really need to ask everybody to sort of respect the times that are allotted, it really is important that we leave time for the community to engage and ask questions, and it's a very full agenda.
I would ask everybody to prepare some, your speaking remarks earlier, and again please respect the time that is actually allotted there.
This is on day one is normally a time when we ask the MAG to allow time for the community to participate. So there is not a significant amount of engagement from the MAG, if you aren't in fact presenting one of the specific activities. Then of course that is reversed in day 2 and day 3 where the community is there as observers and this is the opportunity for the MAG to do their work.
If we move, and again I'm walking through this so everybody there is a lot of information to take on board. You should take some time to look it over and send in any suggestions or comments later. Feel free to share it with the community as well. It's important that we get as much participation as we can in the full MAG meeting, but certainly on day 1 as well.
On day 2, we start with opening statements and a continued briefing on the state of preparations from the Host Country. The bulk of the work of course is focused on finalizing the meeting agenda for the IGF, and that includes obviously the workshop submission, all of the other sessions that take place during an IGF and we also need to focus on a title for the overall activity, and construct the themes.
Once the workshop evaluation is complete, and the Secretariat has had a chance to pull it together and pull some of the metrics and statistics together, they will help us understand what potential track would look like or what the potential program would look like by tracks, and that will be sent to the MAG a week ahead of our face to face meeting so the MAG has some time to review that in some depth as well.
Both of those periods of times, particularly the last one, are significantly longer than we have had in past years. We really do want the MAG to look over the workshops that are selected to think about what it means, in terms of cohesive tracks, themes, are all the topics that are appropriately covered and of course we have to address the suggestions for possible mergers of which it seems as though there are apt to be quite a number of suggestions. But hopefully that is facilitated by the review having been done by theme.
We are considering breaking out into breakout groups to review by theme. Again I think we will have a better sense of that once we understand what the draft program looks like on the basis of the MAG evaluations, and obviously what the possible themes might look like.
We have Sala is doing a little work to see if she can help us understand how to kind of evaluate the diversity of these various, of the draft IGF agenda as it comes in. What I'd also like and I'll send a proposal to the MAG list though, is that we all spend some time thinking about whether it's a stakeholder group focus or regional focus, that are some of the most important topics covered for each stakeholder group and for each region. Are there any topics that are important to a stakeholder group or a region that are missing. Obviously, we should continue to pay attention to other panels, are the panels adequately diverse and overall is the program adequately diverse. And at the same time, are some of the most important topics for the NRIs reflected in the final agenda. They are certainly critical in terms of input to the program, but also with respect to hoping that these workshops actually help support their activities when they go back into the region.
I think we need to think about that piece of the process a little bit more. I see your hand up and I'll come to that in a moment, I do hope the working group and evaluations had some time to think about that particular phase. I think it was phase 3 in the workshop evaluation document. Then I think finally, the other significant piece of work we need to do at our meeting is to focus on the thematic formerly known as main sessions.
There, I think understanding what the draft final program looks like, what are the themes that we are actually centering on, will obviously help support this discussion.
I think the proposals, when we get to that stage, need to obviously include not only a well thought through kind of content and panel, but I think it really needs to focus on what are kind of the desired outputs or what are the policy questions we are trying to advance, really needs to focus on what would be a tangible output coming from these sessions.
I think we all want to do what we can to move forward on the number of critical topics, and these sessions are a great way to tie together the work of the IGF as well as potentially leave the IGF with some forward looking questions or possibly some forward looking work for the next year.
Then the wider part of the last day would be set aside for any additional follow up that is needed based on the open consultation discussions and any of the MAG status updates.
So let me stop there, I think there is two things. I'll ask Rasha to come in now, and I think that is on the workshop evaluation process. But I also want to hear from the members as well, whether or not there are any overall comments or reflections on the agenda as it's laid out. Rasha? You have the floor. Dalila, sorry, we will come back to you in a moment to see if there is anything you want to add, the Secretariat had given us a high level update on the preparations taking place in France, but if there is anything you want to add, we will give you the floor, after we finish this agenda item. Rasha, you have the floor.
>> RASHA: Thank you, Lynn. Good afternoon, everybody or morning, evening, depending on where you are.
I apologize for not getting a chance to answer the E mail, I'm just back to Cairo and trying to catch up on my evaluations. But as far as I remember, I think we had agreed on that point to wait until the results came in, because we weren't sure how the workshops were going to score, basically, and how many can we take in.
We were waiting on input on these two points, how many can we accommodate, and what the actual scores look like, and then once the Secretariat do their nice analysis with how many sessions were scored by how many groups maybe above the grade of 4 or something, then we can take it from there and see which ones we can push through. I thought that was where we left things last time we met.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I don't think that part of the process is in question. But every year, we have then stood back and said, when we look at what that exercise gives us, do we think the program is reflective of all the interests of the community. Sometimes we have said, there aren't many proposals that came in from the Middle East region, for instance.
This year one of the things we tried to do is move away from a single proposer, because we didn't feel that that was reflective of the diversity, since the individual workshops all have a number of participants, whether they are panelists or speakers or moderators or whatever, and that is where the true diversity comes from.
I think we are still struggling to understand kind of, do we have the right overall diversity in the program, and I'll send a Fuller proposal to the MAG list. But I think it would help if we think about, by stakeholder groups or by regions, what are the topics that MAG members feel are important to a stakeholder group or to a region, and do they see those topics adequately reflected in the draft agenda, and if not, then we should have a discussion on that.
But I think it has to be a more qualitative discussion, by looking at the proposals that are there, rather than some top level set of what I think are quite inadequate statistics and I don't know how we get to an adequate statistical review. I think it really needs to be based on the substance and the content of the proposals themselves. So, yes, you are right, with respect to the first part of the process.
But this is more addressing the, when we step back, does this program adequately reflect the interests of all stakeholders and regions, which obviously we need to represent the full level of diversity as well, gender included. Is that
>> RASHA: I agree. I'm thinking aloud as I'm hearing this. I don't see how we can do that without having the set of workshops in front of us, because we (overlapping speakers).
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Clearly we do, clearly we need that. I wasn't asking the working group to prepare something for the MAG. I think this is an exercise the MAG needs to do. I was just looking for other suggestions on how we might do that.
>> RASHA: Yeah, okay.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I think once the MAG, once the Secretariat gets through their analysis and what an appropriate cutoff would be in terms of numbers and puts that in front of the MAG, as MAG members, we will have the ability to look at those 60 or so, or maybe it's 50 and we leave ten for some manipulation. But the MAG will be able to look at those in their entirety, and then I think that is the best way to really understand the diversity and the adequate coverage of all interest levels in the draft program.
>> RASHA: I agree. Yeah.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Good, good. I really was just looking for people ... (chuckles) to see if there was any better way.
Let me see if there, Dalila is trying to come in but doesn't have audio yet. Let me see, are there any other questions, comments, reflections on the proposed agenda? I think the things that will help particularly new MAG members understand where we are going with this would be to look at the session schedule that was just posted in the resource center, to wait until the Secretariat completes their work with respect to the proposals, and what that sort of suggests in terms of themes, which kind of equate to tracks, and sub themes, and to the extent we all look at that and get our own thoughts together, I think we could have, hopefully, at least a process.
I don't see any other requests for the floor. I don't see Dalila, who can hear us but doesn't yet have audio. Luis, is there anything we should do at the moment? Or should we wait? If she has some response, if she can even type them in, Dalila, you can type them into the chat room if that's helpful. Luis?
>> LUIS BOBO: Hi, Lynn, sorry for this. Dalila is indeed here in the room. She can indeed write in the chat, maybe we can write her in the chat to communicate. We already tried to explain to her how to connect to audio, but apparently this is not yet executed. The only thing that we can do is maybe send messages to her in the chat and she can write in the chat, but off line I will try to help her.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you. If you could do that, and I'll leave you to send the chat too so she is not getting input from too many places, and we will just continue working through the agenda, and come back.
Again with respect to the agenda, if people could look through carefully, search for action items, if you are intersessional co facilitator, and get your talking points in order and respect the time, that will help us move through quite quickly as well.
If we move to item 5, Best Practice Forum and CENB updates, a number of them have been sent to the list. Why don't we just ask for sort of brief introductions, and then see if there are any other comments or questions from the MAG members. I saw Ben on the call. I know Ben sent in a, do you want to kick this off?
>> Certainly. Hello from Panama. I understand from the chat I'm not the only one here at ICANN. Yeah, I'll just go over the update that I sent if people didn't have a chance to read it and give people a chance to ask questions.
The cybersecurity BPF held its first call and the meeting summary is available on the Web site, where we discussed the proposal that the MAG approved for this year. The work this year is focused on deepening the conversation around culture, norms and values, and it's, as said before, it's not about the BPF coming up with norms of its own. It's about understanding what norms have been developed across the world, collecting best practices on implementing the norms, and considering how unequal implementation norms might lead to a digital security divide.
But the first step that we took was to invite volunteers to do some preparatory research, to pull together everything that is out there, and I mean, this is my first year closely involved with the BPF but I've lost count of the number of volunteers. I've been very impressed. We definitely are into double digits. Hopefully, that is a good sign for the engagement and the breadth of the involvement for the work ahead.
We currently are scheduling our next call to take place in the next couple of weeks. Then the idea is to launch a call for input in July, which will give, and to kind of make sure we push that out as far as we can into the community, into organizations that we have recognized in previous years, the BPF Cybersecurity have relevant stakes and interest in the issues, and working through the NRIs as well.
And then, the aim is to have a draft outcome document that will be circulated ahead of IGF 2018, and presented at the meeting in Paris, so that we can gather these before finalizing the report early next year.
That is my update. I had one question for you, Lynn, or for the Secretariat, which is: Is there a estimation of when we might know who our consultant will be for this year? I think we are still waiting to hear for the consultants to get contracts and that kind of thing. It will be interesting to know when you think that might happen. Obviously that will greatly assist us in driving the work forward. Thank you.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you for the update. That is an excellent question. I'll turn it back to (overlapping speakers) Secretariat.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Any day now. We have sent the complete sets, and I think it's just going through the system. It shouldn't take, well, it's been two weeks, but I would think any day now, yeah.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I can help follow up on that as well, Ben, and Raquel.
>> Thank you.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Any questions from MAG members for Ben on the Cybersecurity BPF? Let me see, we have three other BPFs, gender, local content, AI, IoT and big data. Does someone want to speak to I saw a report on the AI, IoT and big data. Is someone prepared to do a brief update on that?
>> Yes, Lynn, I can give a short update. We have update to the proposal as [inaudible] have joined the group.
(distorted audio).
We have a meeting on the 15th of June. We went actually through, we try to identify [inaudible] discuss to identify what are the topics, which are further discussed this year. Then we decided the best was actually to understand what is going on in our community. There were a lot of comments from some people. Then we decided we have to identify the topics that should be discussed.
Actually, I will try to make a list of some of them. I'll report it. For sure there are, to define the main risk and benefit to the application. There are topics like data, the relationship between data and communication, artificial intelligence and so. What we do is try to discuss the subset of the topics identified in the last meeting. We are going to plan it next week.
Then I suggested to create two session, one launched a group related to artificial intelligence sector, then [inaudible] artificial intelligence, actually two different topics. Then try to share common views and best practices. Then as a draft plan we will start to write down also the report, that should be shared with the community, work and discussion during the event in Paris.
I've been asked before [inaudible] expert available for the IoT, AI, IoT big data community.
That is my update.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Are there any comments, questions from the MAG members? There was a report published which is on the resource document link.
(whirring noise).
Doing a slow count to 6 to see if there are any comments or questions.
Seeing none, thank you. There were two more. Gender and local content (background noise) Miguel prepared to speak, provide an update? (background noise).
>> Hi, Lynn, hi, everyone, it's Raquel. I can give a quick update, and from also, I saw a couple of the MAG colleagues also here. But regarding the BPF gender, we are kicking off the process. There is a call scheduled for Monday, July 2, at 13 UTC. So we are hoping to get the review and to set the grounds based on the regional proposal document.
So it's kicking off now. Anyone interested to join, if you are still not in the list, please do, or reach out. I don't see Renata on the call, but Renata is also the co facilitator for this BPF. There are some other suggestions that are apart from the mailing list to create some other channels for keeping up with the community engagement.
And Lynn, do you want, regarding the CENB I would follow, since I have the mic, there is not much of the updates now. We are focusing more on the workshop evaluations. But I think following the process that we outline initially and from the previous years, as soon as we have the consultant on board, we can start the round of consultations, consolidate the first draft and put it out for a second round of comments and inputs, and leading for a final document up to the IGF itself.
If we have the consultant, let's say, by the end of June, that would be nice to have at least one month or 45 days for this first round of inputs, although it's during some of the summer vacations in the north, it's still a good period to have July or mid August as a deadline for this first round.
But more honestly we will follow in the face to face meeting. Thank you very much.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Raquel. Any questions for Raquel on either of the BPF on gender or the CENB policy initiative?
Again, counting to 6. Let me, I'm going to go to Miguel in a moment to ask him to give an update on the local content. But could I also ask Markus a little heads up, if you would be prepared to give an update on dynamic coalitions, it wasn't called out in the agenda but it was a typing oversight. I'll allow Markus a few minutes to think about that while Miguel gives us a update on BPF local content. Miguel? (pause).
Miguel, I see you were unmuted, now you are muted again. Okay. Could you or the Secretariat please provide that update here now? I'm assuming that means you sent it to Eleonora. Eleonora, do you have it there? If not, Miguel, if you have voice, could you read it out, please? Eleonora, do you have the update?
>> Hi, everyone, sorry, it's Eleonora. I think it's probably still making its way through my E mail, apologies for that. I'll look for it.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Okay. Thank you. We will come back to okay. I guess it's, he just posted it. Thank you, Miguel. Anybody that is on the phone, basically Miguel says that we are in the phase of contacting people and organizations to join. We will have the first formal BPF meeting before the face to face meeting in Geneva. Perhaps you could put a formal request out to the MAG members as well, so we can get a more robust jump on it. That would be appreciated.
Again, these are resources that are supported by the Secretariat. So it's important that we actually maximize the resources, and move them forward.
Markus, are you able to give an update on the D.C.s?
>> Yes, I can say a few words, but there is nothing really. We had continued our discussions. We had several coordination calls since the IGF in December, and we have the next meeting, next call next week, actually. We schedule that in anticipation for the face to face meeting in early July, so that we would have something more to report.
But there is no closure on any issues. But we had agreed also to be more aligned with the other processes, and there was also an E mail I had sent to the MAG list, that it will be good to have a call between all the various initiatives, we would have alignment to the extent possible, just a soft alignment as regards deadlines, as it can be confusing for the broader community when they are asked to submit comments by then, by then, by then, but if we have just sort of common dates. But also, the point was made again and again that the D.C.s have a slightly different dynamic, and also that the meeting in the annual meeting is supposed to digest some of the substantive work and bring the substantive work forward, so the process is different.
Another issue we have discussed is whether, again, we should ask for a joint session, the main session, and whether that should be the same format as in previous years, where each DC focused on what they had been doing, and with what we call the adjunct provocateur moderator and that produced lively and interesting sessions, but the question was then asked whether we should not maybe try something different, and align the DCs behind a common theme. But that I think would also be part of the broader architecture the MAG, broader discussion the MAG will have related to the meeting architecture.
But to cut a long story short, the DCs are ready to contribute to the program, and they have a lot of substantive input to provide, and at the same time, there was some frustration last year that they were only given a short session, and some made the point that 90 minutes for them is a minimum to actually deal with all the substantive work that has been going on in the previous twelve months.
So this is a very rough summary of where we are, and we will be able to report more after next week's call to the MAG meeting, the following week. Thank you for that.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Markus. Appreciate all the work you are doing there.
Any comments, questions from MAG members for Markus on DCs? I've given Anja a heads up that I'll be coming to her for the NRIs next as well.
Counting to 6 to see if there is anybody interested in following up with Markus. Seeing none, Anja, as most of you know, is the NRI focal point within the Secretariat. I've asked her to give us a quick update on some of their current activities as well. Anja, you have the floor.
>> ANJA: Thank you very much, Lynn.
Just a very quick update on the NRIs following on the outcomes from the last week's latest call we had. That is that the NRIs decided in that their joint session, hopefully there will be a main session, the request is with the MAG, will be focused on the evolution of the Internet Governance. We are now in a process of trying to again decide whether it will be concrete substantive focus of the session, most probably the session will focus on the Internet Governance on national and regional levels. But there are also some views where they think that the multistakeholder process is a specific value of the IGF, and that that should be also at least partially focus of that session.
By the end of next week, we will know exactly the exact title of the session, also as I said substantive focus, format and we will of course communicate to the MAG just to have all this information for their final decision, whether the NRIs will host the main session at the IGF in France. Thank you.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Anja. Any questions, comments for Anja? What I find really helpful and I think the other, well, the other, but the intersessional activities should do the same thing, is the fact that there is a specific and clear request from the NRIs, so that enables the MAG to address it, again, a number of the activities in the IGF ecosystem have different relationships to the MAG, and the MAG has different responsibilities, in quotes, to the various activities.
That is one of the things we are trying to identify and make clear the IGF component document, that again is posted on that resource page, talks about what some of those differences are, and points you to the guiding documents that oversee that relationship or responsibility. So that is critical to understand that.
But if you are in a intersessional activity, if you have the specific request, it would be very helpful to put that in writing to the MAG ahead of our face to face meeting.
So, if there are no other questions or comments there, we will move to the penultimate agenda item, that is MAG working group updates. Is there someone who wants to kick off? Lee Ann for improvements or Israel, that would be excellent. Israel.
>> Hello, can you hear me?
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Yes.
>> Perfect. Greetings from Panama also. On behalf of the co facilitators of the working group on knowledge engagement, just really brief update. We have the weekly review on Internet Governance created by Mamadou. We don't have currently much activity.
We recognize the importance of the members of the workshop of the evaluation process, but we are planning our call next week, in order to plan the activities for the following weeks.
So we kindly invite the MAG members to join us in the mailing list, and sharing the link in the chat. I will send also the same link to the mailing list in order to enhance the outreach and communications of all the activities of the IGF. Thank you.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Israel. Any questions, comments? Not seeing anyone, we will move to the next update. Rasha, do you want to give any additional updates on the working group prep? Or was that covered earlier?
>> Hi, Lynn. I think we have covered where we stand earlier. We might try to have a meeting if people have the time to discuss the points that you raised before the next face to face meeting. But for now I think we're set.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Okay, good. Thank you, Rasha.
>> Thank you.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Julian, you prepared to give a update on the working group improvements?
>> Thank you, Lynn. Yes. Can you hear me?
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Yes, we can hear you well.
>> Okay. Well, the work group on improvements, we had a meeting on the 5th of June, basically to restart the activities of the group, and basically we decide to agree in having as organizers of the work group, as Co Chairs, that's Flavio and me, and Deborah Brown from Association for Progressive Communications working. We had the opportunity to discuss the next steps after presentation that Flavio did in the meeting.
We decided to have the following steps. One of those were to get to involve MAG members from countries hosted, that hosted the IGF to encourage to give their input to the working group, and also to work on the previous table or work space that we have with all the inputs for improvements for the IGF. So basically, based on that table, we cluster categories to reduce and to make like more efficient the way to build and to work on those improvements, and ask for volunteers to look into these categories that were clustered.
In this exercise, we are reducing 11 tabs with categories that are available for consultation in the spreadsheet. And what we are planning to do now is to access which are the recommendations that are completed or the implementations suggested are completed in the table, which of them are in progress or to be implemented.
We want to also make some recommendations and/or priority assessment to be presented to the MAG. So basically, we are in the step, in the second step. And hopefully, we will get more volunteers for the group. So far, we have six volunteers from MAG members, we have four former MAG members. We have Flavio and Deborah from APC. We are looking forward to continue the work after the evaluation of the workshops. Hopefully, we will organize our next meeting soon, and encourage all of you to participate.
I know Flavio is in the call. I don't know if maybe he has some other comments to add. Thank you.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Julian. Flavio, is there anything you would like to add? (pause).
While Flavio is
>> Do you hear me?
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Yes, we can hear you now.
>> Sorry, thank you, Lynn, thank you, Julian. No, I think Julian has covered very well all the steps we had already. So we hope to have more volunteers to help us assess all those more than maybe 150 different types of improvements that have been identified from various sources, from various fora in the past. Then as Julian explained, we have split all those improvements in different categories and are now trying to build small sub teams to assess each of the categories and all the improvements within each category. We hope to do this in the next weeks until end of July, maybe after the face to face MAG meeting. So thank you, Lynn.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Flavio as well.
This work is really important, and if you haven't looked at the spreadsheet, it's a very very impressive spreadsheet, very impressive set of recommendations, that again have come up through a number of UN processes whether CSCD, stock taking exercises, through the DESA retreat in 2016, and it's important, not only because the Secretariat has to report out regularly to various UN bodies about the progress the IGF is making against some of those improvements, it's also important because it should help set the priorities for our continued improvement.
I might have to say that that's, you know, really, really important set of work, so I thank everybody for participating.
I have two working group updates wait a minute, sorry. Were there any comments for Julian or Flavio? Any questions? Okay. Seeing none, I have two working group updates to give. I'll start with the working group on fund raising.
Relatively small team, but everybody is very committed to helping here. We have met twice, our third meeting is later this week. We are on a two week meeting schedule. We have agreed that the working group would work on two major areas in parallel. One of them would be focused on formalizing various aspects of the fund raising effort. There are different roles within the UN, different roles for the Secretariat, MAG members and chair, and also the need to clarify some of the UN procedures or any restrictions or specific items we need to be aware of. That work has begun as well.
The second effort is actually focused on bringing in additional donors now, I think everyone is well aware that the IGF is significantly underfunded. We are funded to about a 40 percent rate of the budget that was actually submitted. That means we don't have the staff that was expected in the project document, the budget that was actually submitted for this last IGF mandate.
Obviously that impacts our ability to provide additional resources to a lot of our efforts, including some of these working group efforts, and obviously, restricts hiring of staff in the Secretariat. So they continue to be significantly overstretched, and really admiring of all the work they do, and their very obvious commitment to the IGF and making this successful.
So that second piece of work is critically important. We have a meeting later this week. There is some activity around a short list of donors, would really like to work to a slightly longer list, we are not looking for a list of 50 or a hundred. But rather kind of high quality possible candidates that we can actively work with to bring in. One of the things we are discussing, so you might see some notes coming out separately, will be for instance work with some of the intersessional activities, such as the Best Practice Forums, to understand what additional partners might be of help to them in their work, both in terms of further enabling their work as well as for possible donations to the IGF trust fund.
We have also talked about putting together and possibly reviewing some of the existing documents, which highlight the importance of the IGF and topics are expected to be of high interest, again that would lead us to some potential list of donors. As always, we encourage the MAG members to help identify potential donors as well. It is, in fact one of the expectations, not that the MAG specifically does fund raising, but that the MAG is always aware of the activities of the IGF, who would potentially make a good donor to the trust fund, and obviously that is people who are interested in supporting the work and participating, even when I say donors, I do mean participants and contributors as well. We are looking for both those activities.
I think you should watch the E mail for more activities there. But again, if any MAG member comes across a specific organization that you think would be a great participant in some of the work of the IGF or any of its intersessional activities, and/or a potential donor, feel free to drop a note to myself or Chengetai and the Secretariat, and we will pick it up and work it appropriately from there.
Let me see if there are any kind of comments on that working group. That was working group fund raising, before I go to the final one.
>> Hello, can you hear me?
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Yes.
>> This is Dalila from the French Ministry. Sorry, we just managed to hear the call, sorry for not being here at the beginning.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: That is fine, Dalila, we are happy to have you here. We can give you the floor now, if there are any updates, and certainly Chengetai and I are happy to catch up later with respect to the earlier part of the call. I'll come back to the last working group, because it's a really important working group, in just a moment. But Dalila, is there anything you want to add from there?
>> Yes, just a very short update. Two weeks ago we met with Chengetai and IGF Secretariat, at UNESCO. We are now in the step of organizing a very important point, as the budget and the UNESCO space, and now we have also some question about the face to face meeting in Geneva in two weeks. We don't know if the hosting country can come and participate in the face to face meeting.
And if you have any other questions, don't hesitate. But we are just now in the very precise on the organization of the session of the IGF. We have not yet all the precise planning on the three days session of the IGF.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, Dalila. To answer your one question specifically, I mean not only is the Host Country extremely welcome (overlapping speakers) you play a critical role in the meeting as well. So we can catch up off line.
There was a review of the agenda. But again, warmly welcome and critical role (overlapping speakers) in the three days.
>> Thank you.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Any specific questions from MAG members for Dalila? Or Dalila, is there anything else you would like to add?
>> Yes, just for the evaluation of the workshop proposal, we would like to know if the Host Country can contribute, we don't know so we just ask the question.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Typically, the Host Country has not been a part of the workshop evaluation process that just occurred. But absolutely are part of the discussions during the face to face meeting, where we actually review the results of the MAG members' evaluation, and work to shape the final agenda for the IGF meeting. That is typically where the Host Country has participated.
>> Okay, thank you very much.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: You're welcome. Again, at your convenience, Chengetai and I would be very happy to have a call and work through some of this.
>> Yes, of course, Lynn, because David was in Panama, but we can try to pick something from today or before the end of the week, if you want.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: There is no hurry, truly at your convenience. I mean next week is fine as well.
>> Of course.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I've attended over 50 ICANN meetings and I know just how very busy they are.
>> Good, thank you.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: We will meet at your convenience.
Any other questions from MAG members for Dalila.
>> It's okay for us.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: I think so. I'm doing a slow count to 6 to see if anybody has requested anything. But no, I think that's it, Dalila. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Sorry, this is Rudolf. I have one question on the Day Zero, or not Day Zero, on this high level event. Do we have to block the schedules of our ministers for anything on the 11th?
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Dalila, are you still
>> Yes. Thank you, Rudolf, for your question. We are working on the Day Zero. I cannot give you many details now. But what I can give you as advice is, yes, to try to ask your ministers, is it possible to be available on the Day Zero. But I hope at the beginning of the week we can give you a more precise answer on this.
>> Thank you very much.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Can I clarify, that what you are actually talking about is the high level event, not Day Zero. Typically the high level event occurs on what has been labeled Day Zero in the IGF program. But the day zero is a whole host of other community meetings taking advantage of the fact that the Prime Ministers are usually there and available. But what I think Rudolf, you are asking and Dalila was speaking about was specifically the high level, used to be called high level political event.
>> Yes, of course.
>> Yes, yes, of course.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: We need to be quite careful to make sure that we don't confuse the community about there being a Day Zero.
>> Yes, of course, Lynn.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you. Any further questions? Not seeing any, Dalila, thank you again. Thank you for coming in.
>> Thank you very much. Sorry for being so late.
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: We will talk to you later.
If I could come back to the working group update on multi year strategic work program, we have had three meetings there, and everything is actually going, I think, pretty well. Again, this follows on and basically picked up from the same working group last year, so there was some history and a awful lot of work happening there in the background as well.
We have quite a robust participation, which is excellent. We are focusing on advancing a couple of key areas. I did send in a written report for this meeting, but also the meeting summaries are also posted under the MAG working group section as well.
The areas we are focused on is really trying to produce more tangible concrete outputs, and as part of that, obviously bringing more cohesiveness to the work of the MAG and community within the IGF ecosystem. There are a number of proposals that are, have been submitted. One of them was approved by last year's working group, which is document that looks at all the component pieces of the IGF annual meeting and the intersessional activities. That's helpful because it does underline the different responsibilities, different genesis of many of the activities, and there are links there to the guiding documents as well.
A document that was just produced through this year's working group is extremely helpful, is actually called, I think it was posted as an ecosystem IGF, ecosystem overview. What it looks at is all the various inputs from the various pieces in the IGF ecosystem, talks about the outputs that come out of those various pieces, and there is also a time line associated with what we would like to do to continue to advance that work.
You will see again the documents are all referenced in the meeting summaries, and we will be working over, hopefully, the next week, to get a, to get the document out in front of the MAG and the community much more fully with a short explanatory text as well. This was part of the effort to understand how all the pieces fit together. But also to begin identifying how we might progress multi year activities. Again, those two documents are really useful.
The second major theme of work, as I mentioned a moment ago, focuses on what more tangible concrete outputs might look like. And there are two documents there, that are posted. One is also result of last year's working group activity, which is an options paper to look at, it's called the option paper on methodologies for the development of IGF outputs. There was a second document which is also from last year and in fact, comes from a couple of sessions at the last two IGFs, which actually looks at recommendations for strengthening cooperation within the context of the IGF.
In some of those discussions, the working group is considering preparing a pilot, maybe two, but I think it's likely to be one, which would actually focus on trying to assess some of the tools that are out there, that would actually help us to provide some more concrete outputs. Again I should say we are very focused on staying completely within the Tunis Agenda, but trying to take on board all the suggestions for improvements, trying to recognize the fact that there is a larger more strategic set of discussions happening at a geopolitical level, if we look at what happened with the GGE last year, and their failure to produce a written report on Cybersecurity, despite having done some very very good work in previous years, and of course, the working group on enhanced cooperation also failed to deliver a report. And there is also a series of activities within the UN system, as the UN is very focused on and very concerned about what they call frontier issues, which covers everything from Cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, privacy, big data, ethics, I'm sure Internet of Things, and I'm sure most of you are aware it was mentioned at our last physical MAG meeting, that the Secretary General is looking to convene a high level panel, in its simplest terms, to understand what the UN role might be in terms of helping to advance some of these issues.
Of course, the IGF as a U.N. convened activity is sort of in that mix, in their considerations. So with all that on board, the working group is really trying to understand what we can do to really take a more, I think thematic view, multi year view, and focus on what are some of the concrete outputs we can provide, and specifically there are some policy questions that we might help address in this greater system.
So, you should look for more information on that as well as the working group continues its work.
I think that is pretty much that. One of the things that we are thinking on is whether or not there is an opportunity to look at a pilot across some of the Paris Peace Forum activities, and the IGF, and we, of course, need to engage with the French Government representatives, and the Paris Peace Forum, and I suspect that that will be something we can talk about a little bit more at our face to face meeting in Geneva, precisely about how we do that. I think that would be a good opportunity to raise the visibility of the IGF, and specifically perhaps pilot some of these other notions.
I will stop there for a moment. There are quite a number of folks on the call here who are also participating in that working group. If there is anyone who wants to add anything, again, I think the meeting summaries are pretty complete and I hope helpful. Let me count to 6 and see if there's any other comments or questions.
I don't see any, which would bring us to our final item, which is just AOB, if there are any other topics people would like to bring up. Otherwise, as somebody said, we can return the time to everyone. All right. I don't see any other comments.
I want to thank everybody for coming, particularly those that are in Panama for the ICANN meeting. I know it's a busy time there. And a big thank you to everybody for sending in written updates. It helps a lot, and having requested this the last three years, this is the best response we have had. (chuckles).
That is excellent. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Have a good week.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you, Lynn, thank you, everybody.